I promise I'll write more soon. In the meantime here are more pictures and a short short story:
I went to see our public information officer today and while I was in her trailer someone returned from an errand in town. In a tone of wonder others might use to describe an exquisite dinner out, she said "I got a Klondike bar and used a toilet that flushed!"
I love fire camp but admit both of those items sound marvelously luxurious right now.
Goodnight!

Well as you all may well know by now we have had a dramatic change of events. Saturday was such a good day I feel I owe it to myself and the memory of this trip to write in my journal and record all those great feelings as if nothing had happened yet. So here goes.
We got up VERY early this morning to try and get ahead of the traffic we dealt with yesterday! We were on the road literally at the crack of dawn and stopped for our favorite breakfast at McDonald's! Love my Egg McMuffin! There isn't much you can do to an egg to make it...

Park City, UT We felt a need to exercise our creative juices today, so we went to The Art Box. We have made our own candles before but only tapers that we dipped. Today we experienced an entirely different kind of candle making. First, we decided on a theme (travel), then we selected our basic shape (agonizing), assembled our bouquet pieces (excruciating), selected our colors (intense), and chose our fragrance (problematic). Now we had to break up the colored wax and arrange the pieces in the mold. Hot wax was then poured over the top,...

I first opened a map of the United States and laid out a route for this back in 2011. When I stood back and looked at the route I realized I would be hitting every state in the western U.S. except North Dakota. Ergo the little side trip to Fargo yesterday. Now I can say I've been there.
Had a number of observations traveling down I-29 from Fargo to Sioux Falls. The land was extremely flat like northern Minnesota. Although ND is supposed to be a wheat producing state, what I saw was a lot of corn and soy beans. Then almost exactly at the...

From the high peaks of Texas to a massive underground room in New Mexico, we spent today visiting two of the nation’s national parks. Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Cavern are about 35 miles apart.
We started at Guadalupe. This park is truly a wilderness area. There are no roads that penetrate into the park. The visitors center is just off the highway that runs along the edge of the park between Carlsbad, N.M., and El Paso, Texas. The only way to really experience the park is to hike, something Vivian and I are not about to do. There is...

After our cruise ship left Skagway we traveled 183 miles, overnight, to Glacier Bay National Park. We passed by the Takhinsha and Chilkat Mountain Ranges on our way into the park constantly looking for wildlife such as moose and bear but all we saw where mountain goats.
We spent an entire day in Glacier Bay National Park viewing the pristine environment and gazing upon the immense and spectacular glaciers, ice floes and icebergs. 250 years ago there was no Glacier Bay, it was all glacier and no bay. It was a massive river of ice, roughly...

So here it is, the end of the journey.
We made the trip over the last bridge and out to Pensacola Beach and the new Surf and Sand Hotel. It is really nice and a great choice to spend the last day. We actually rode over Sunday. Tried to take our time because check in was not until 4:00 pm. Knowing that every hotel was completely booked on Saturday night, figured there wasn't much of a chance on gettting too early of a check in but most places have been so accomodating, thought they would be too! NOT! I expected it, so we said, well we will...

We have been in Red Bay since Friday afternoon. But, today is when everything starts for real. Sue contacted the three vendors we came to see. Two confirmed appointments. The third was a long shot but we will know more tomorrow on his availability.
I found a photo I did not post on the Saturday update. It shows a mallard playing in the casual standing water in the adjacent camp site in Maumelle Park. The duck is in the upper center of the picture close to the tree. It is not often you see casual water in a camp site deep enough to support...

Date: August 13, 2018
Weather: partly cloudy
Temperature: start 46º
High 82º
Wildlife count:
Year List: 349
Birds:
We were a little slow getting up this morning – it was good to relax. By the time we got to the VC, we decided to go instead to the overlook with the scope and check out the myriad of ducks on Flat Creek. Several birders were there when we arrived, so we shared the scope. The Trumpeter Swans were easily visible with their three cygnets.
Work was fast and furious today, with no down time. We decided that the only time we...

I was given information about a couple of state parks in the area so I looked them up to see if there were letterboxes there. Bingo with Millersylvania State Park south of Olympia. The campground is on the north side, so I decided to go the scenic route and not on I-5. It started out okay but soon enough I was sitting for 20 minutes at a construction site where they are building a traffic circle! They do love their circles in the residential districts!
The park was given to the State of Washington in 1921 to be used as a park forever! The...

Aug 12 - Not far, went to Norris Geyser Basin, having missed it in previous two days. Waited for 'Whirlegig' to erupt; left after 15 minutes after the ranger said it might erupt, we continue on Boardwalk toward other vistas. You guessed it; as we were 200 yards away, it went up. I bearly got a photo, but with the wrong lens. After returning to camper and googling it, found out that later in the afternoon it erupted several times again, longer and higher than what we witnessed. Tomorrow we decamp and proceed to Tetons. And we did see elk...

Do you believe in UFOs? Do you think we have been visited by extraterrestrial beings? Do you think the government and military are covering up the truth?
The folks of Roswell, N.M., do. They have established the International UFO Museum and Research Center. That’s where we stopped today.
Roswell is a typical southeast New Mexico town. We had to drive over the Rocky Mountains at Apache Pass, elevation 7,591 feet, to get to Roswell. The town is surrounded mostly by cattle ranches.
It was on one of these ranches that the Roswell Incident...